Laura Mann

http://www.dhatrifoundation.org/home
Sometimes life just sucks. Laura Mann died yesterday. She was a cousin through marriage. I loved her. And not only that, I liked her. She was that rare combination of warmth, empathy, acceptance and perseverance. She will be missed by so many and for so long.

Time Flies

It has certainly been awhile since I posted, not because I haven't thought about Solomon, just that I haven't felt like posting. Eric and I will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary in a few days, which means I am closer to re-living my experiences with Solomon's pregnancy. I go months without recalling anything and then some moment of the experience will creep back into my mind.

Like the other day, I received notification in the mail about the new "Red Light Cameras" that have been installed in my town. And it reminded me of the first time I drove my Buick Skyhawk after losing Solomon. I was traveling north on Jerusalem Avenue in Levittown heading towards my therapist in Sysosset and as I approached the first intersection with a traffic light I drove right through it. I was 4 blocks past when I realized the light had been red and I didn't stop. I wasn't freaked out or anything until I arrived at the therapist's office and realized I could have hurt someone. That was the worst part of that particular moment.

Communion

Yesterday was Rebecca's communion. It was really great to share the day with my best friend and her family. I looked at a photo album from Rebecca's baptism and saw Solomon's mom. Rebecca and Solomon were supposed to be born within days of each other. Rebecca and Solomon were supposed to be friends.

In the photo album is the "after" Amy - the one who lost Solomon. I am smiling because I am so thrilled for my friend. I am smiling because I am pregnant AGAIN. That baby wouldn't arrive either, but I didn't know that then.

I still have the outfit I wore to Rebecca's baptism and toyed with wearing it yesterday. How ironic that would have been if I did.

Miss you S.

Passover 2009

Tomorrow I will host my first seder as Eric's wife, in our home. It is 2009.

The first seder we spent as a married couple I was in mourning. I will forever have my mother-in-law's face imprinted in my memory from when we arrived at her sister's house for Passover. I know it was a look of concern, but what I felt (and still do on occasion) is FAILURE. I ran to the bathroom and just burst into tears.

"Next year in maternity clothes" was what I uttered when everyone else state strongly, "next year in Jerusalem."

And here I am hosting my first seder. Solomon is missing. My grandmother in missing. I will lay the table with our glass dishes and my grandmother's kiddush cup for Elijah. I will engage Alison and Adam (hopefully) in the seder. Hopefully I will make things easier for my family, my parents especially.

The holiday of Passover is about freedom. Those who grieve are never really free from it.

The Day of Why

It is now 8:51pm and I am waiting to exhale. This is always the worst day for me, every year. It is easier, I'll grant you that, than last year and last year was easier than the one before. But I can feel the stress of the day in my body, the tension upon awakening knowing this is "that day."

Solomon would be 9 today if he had lived. And if he had lived, I wonder how he would be. I get so emotional when I see special needs kids, and thank God every day for the normalness my children exhibit.

Today is the only day of the year I give myself permission to ask the whys? Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to him? Why did this happen to us?

What did I do to deserve this? Technically, not a why question, but something wondered always in the recesses of my mind, my only answer being so I would know what real stress and heartache are, as opposed to the daily stresses and heartaches of every day life.

I just don't think that's a good enough answer.

Ash Wednesday

I just realized it is Ash Wednesday, not a holiday of significance for me but it is the day I delivered Solomon. March 8, 2000 was also Ash Wednesday. When I delivered him, only Eric and my doctor were in the room with me. When all was done, I remember my nurse returning, she had gone to church on her lunch break. It's curious what gets remembered and when.

Now They Are Both Curious

I don't know how it came up but now they are both curious. Alison must have said something to Adam. The other night she asked me again the name of the baby who died, and Adam asked what baby? Without going through the gory details I told them as calmly as I could the baby's heart didn't work and he died in my tummy. I feel I am usually good with words and I have been preparing and planning for this for years and now that it's here, I am just at a loss. Again.

A Passing Nightmare

I am home now almost 24 hours after a passing nightmare. Adam has been sick since October 13 and while the initial ailment resolved fairly quickly, a secondary one set in. We went from "check in in the morning if he is still running a fever" to "I have to send you to the ER at the hospital."

Losing Solomon was the hardest thing I ever had to go through. But lying in the hospital chair-bed, next to Adam's silently dripping IV, I realized it could not have been. Solomon's loss was losing a dream, but the reality that I was here with a sick kid was a living nightmare. The panic took root in my bones, and while we are out of the woods now, my body has not relaxed.

Luckily, whatever was ailing Adam has seemed to pass. He has been fever-free for 72 hours. He is so drugged up for a broad range of possible illness that I know all the bad germs are almost gone. He is eating his restricted diet and will return to school Monday [god willing] on restricted activities.

But he is fine, and he is home.

Questions

I woke up last Saturday morning with an inkling that this might be the day, the day when Alison or Adam has questions. I mentioned this to Eric who replied, "You say that every year." And that is true. But this year I was right.

Alison accompanied me on this years Walk To Remember - chosing this activity over watching her brother play soccer, or should I say run around the soccer field with a group of 5 year old boys with a soccer ball in the midst.

The walk was proceding and it was a good half hour before Ali said anything. She asked if we could see our page. I knew she meant the scrapbook page I had done for Solomon, so we walked over to it and I showed her. Then she asked if we could see our quilt square. So I walked her over to where the quilt was displayed and showed her. Her first reaction was to ask, "Who was born on March 8?" I told her, "the baby." She asked, naturally, "What baby?" and I told her, "the baby who died in my tummy before you were born." She seemed to take my remarks in and felt satisfied. Until...

Until my friend's daughter asked her, "Was the baby who died a girl or a boy?" And Alison in her sweet voice replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about." So I told her the baby was a boy and his name was Solomon, Solomon was the baby who died in my tummy before you were born. Again she took in my remarks and seemed satisfied.

I have no idea what she thinks. She knows a photo of our family adorns a book cover but I don't think she understands why or what the book is about.

I wonder if I handled her questions ok, and appreciate that she didn't ask more than I was willing to answer. For my children, life's questions will forever go beyond "where do babies come from?"

School Year

I just got off the telephone with Patty, Patty who understands.

I am missing my children something awful.

When pregnant with Alison, I didn't believe I was having a baby. I felt if I ever got to give birth, it would be to nothingness. When I was pregnant with Adam, I swore until the moment of delivery I would have another daughter, a sister for Alison, named Julia Elizabeth. When my doctor pronounced, "It's A Boy," all I could think was "how could my daughter have a penis?" Perhaps it was the drugs from the c-section, but the thought rolled around in my head for weeks afterwards.

I find myself calm at this moment, after being in tears just a short while ago. I felt weepy for Solomon on the first day of school - he would have been a third-grader like so many of my friends' kids. But now, with both Alison and Adam in school, I feel a different kind of loss, one that is much harder to describe to someone who isn't like me. So I called who I knew would help.

And she did.

The Day Before

I remember this day, August 13, 2001, quite clearly. Actually, the evening.

I had a routine OB appointment. I was humongous, strapped to the monitor. I looked like a whale. Eric took a photo for posterity. We had just received our first digital camera and this was the test shot.

Dr. E. proceeded to tell me everything was fine. Yes, everything pregnancy-wise was. But I was a nervous wreck. I had spent the prior 37 weeks and 6 days alternating between fear of never having a living child and denial that I was even pregnant.

I asked Dr. E. about an early delivery. The thought of two more weeks felt like two more years. He uttered magic words, "if you wake up tomorrow and you feel the baby is moving less, call the office and we will get you delivered."

That's all it took. And my journey of grief was ending.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ny-stillbirth-bill




Please sign the petition - we are working frantically to get the Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth Law passed in NYS.

Today

Solomon, I miss you today. Not that I don't miss you everyday, I do. Just today is your big brother Alex's bar mitzvah and I wish you were here with us to celebrate. He wanted to meet you so much and was so brave.

8

I did not think last week would ever end. Tuesday started with what would have been my grandmother's 90th birthday. I had been mentally planning her party since her 89th birthday.

Saturday was 8 years. 8 years. I cannot believe it. And I had to get through the day without my grandmother. Eric sent Adam over to me to tell me Solomon loves me. Hearing his name come out of Adam's mouth was shocking, but brought me to a moments reality during a very cloudy morning.

I was cold all day and tried to avoid writing the date. Stupid me had to write 3 checks and in the moment I wrote it 3/8/08 but wouldn't record it in the checkbook.

I feel guilty that I did not look at Solomon's photos, something I always do on his anniversary. Instead, I Eric and I shopped, had lunch and promptly fell asleep from our big meal. By nighttime, I'd curled up with a book, Bed Rest, which was pleasant enough. But I stayed up only until it was a respectable hour to go to sleep.

When I woke on Sunday, I felt lighter because I had survived Solomon's day, again, without him.

Ralph

I saw Ralph last Saturday at Mike and Marie's holiday party. I haven't seen him in two years, not since the last time Eric and I were able to be at M&Ms holiday party. Ralph is a friend of my husband, they used to work for the same company, and Ralph lives a mere seven minutes from our house (not that we ever see him!)

What distinguishes Ralph to me is that he knew me during my happiest time and through my saddest, a span of only three years. When I met Ralph, we hit it off right away - he was a good buddy of Eric's and through lots of fun times, parties and outings, we had a blast. We're even the same sign, Capricorn, but don't ask me what that might have to do with anything.

After Solomon, I was a different person. And somehow Ralph gave me laughs two and three. It sounds funny to write it like that but that's how it was.

At Atlantis in the Bahamas, I spent a miserable week. This was Eric's company trip and he worked really hard to earn it. I was devastated as I'd planned to be pregnant, nearly 8 months so and here I was, nothing. One night we were at one of the club with Ralph, Mike, Marie and some others. All of a sudden, Ralph starts rapping to a Madonna song, I forget which one. The hilarity of the situation is hard to capture. Ralph was a 40-ish, short, Italian, divorced-with-no-children, guy from Queens. He did not fit any mold of any rapper anywhere on the planet. The joy I felt at laughing in relief could be measured on the Richter scale. That was laugh #2.

Of course I was pregnant for the third time in January 2001, dreading what would happen in the future. Eric convinced me we should go away for a ski weekend, in which I wouldn't ski, go snow-mobiling, drink or sit in the hot tub. So I read a book, White Oleander by Janet Fitch, and an issue of "O" - the magazine Oprah Winfrey puts out. Ralph, Mike and Marie and assorted brothers, brothers-in-laws and friends of Mike and Ralph's were also at the cabin. I forgot which meal it was, we were all gathered around. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. All of a sudden, Ralph starts to sink. Now mind you he is already sitting in a chair at the dinner table and seems to be moving south involuntarily. Turns out, the chair rail started to deteriorate right before everyones eyes. We were all a ball of hysterics, even me. When Ralph finally emerged from the floor, you could tell he thought this was just the funniest thing.

We spoke about Ralph's chair incident on Saturday, and I've been meaning to post since then. When I think back to the dark time, it's hard to remember that there were glimpses of light. And Ralph is someone whom I lease expected to be the light-giver.

October 10 Reunion Group

I attended a Reunion Group this week and saw Patty, Janine T, Bill and Diana and Rosemary and her husband. We were the reunion-ers. In the loss group were several couples, one couple in particular who were there for a repeat. Their second pregnancy ended in loss recently. I remmebered them immediately from the first time I spoke at their group. Talk about UNFAIRNESS.

I sat and listened to the loss group members relay their experiences, and went through my part with my usual shaking and nerous voice. It is still painful to talk about, even at 7+ years. I wonder what the next 7 will be like.

The Walk to Remember

October 6th was The Walk to Remember. As strange as this may sound, it was truly wonderful to be there and not be a speaker. It's not that I don't want to talk, anyone who knows me knows I have a hard time shutting up. It was more of a relief to have the role of just a mourner among all the others. And there were others....so may newbies. That's what incites my anger now, that more and more women and men and families are experience pregnancy loss.

I was angry with myself for such a long time for taking Solomon from me and did let go of the anger eventually. It took years but I eventually forgave myself too. But the naive part of me still wants no more pregnancies to have unhappy outcomes. I know my thoughts are unreasonable, I just can't help them.

Solomon's Paper

I received in the mail Solomon scrapbook paper - I went on the Scrap It Simple website and ordered white cardstock, blue ink, scatter design, of his name. It will be for the memorial book Winthrop University Hospital is compiling. I originally wanted to do Solomon's page identical to his quilt square. But too many computer crashes and too many lost files has lost the document into cyberspace. So I am using the name paper and created a solid blue heart with white lettering indicating his date, March 8, 2000.

Alison is 6 today!

Alison is 6 today. It hardly seems like she should be this up in years already. I am thankful for every second I have spent with her. She is my joy!

This Years' Walk

I've already received email and snail mail announcements for this years' Walk to Remember sponsored by Winthrop University Hospital. I spoke with Patti, and we really both have mixed feelings about participating.

Yes, the boulder of grief has been chipped away from my heart and I don't actively mourn Solomon anymore. But on the other hand, I know what comfort I got in the early months from those who had also "been there" and I always feel the need to "give back." At least I don't have to decide today.